San Francisco: Twitter Inc hopes to woo investors with rip-roaring revenue growth despite having posted big losses over the past three years. In its filing, the first public disclosure of financial figures, Twitter reported that revenue almost tripled to $316.9 million in 2012. In the first-half of 2013, it posted revenue of $253.6 million but had a loss of $69.3 million.

Twitter’s target is to raise $1 billion, a figure devised mainly for registration purposes and that will change as the company embarks on a roadshow to sell its IPO to investors. Assuming everything goes smoothly, it could begin trading in November, though it has not revealed which US exchange — the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq — it has chosen.

In the laundry list of risk-factors that’s typically appended to all company IPO filings, Twitter warned it was heavily reliant on advertising revenue. It said more than 87 per cent of its revenue came from advertising in the first half of 2013.

The company began selling advertising in earnest only in 2010, devising a means for ads to appear in the message streams of users that has proven effective for both desktop computers and mobile devices.

The losses are “a non-issue,” said Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research Group. “It would have been a surprise if they had a profit.”

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The prices Twitter can command for ads has actually fallen over the past five quarters. But the company said that decline was the result of a conscious effort to rapidly expand its available inventory and change its algorithms to distribute ads more frequently throughout each day.

Revenue has risen because the strategy attracted more advertisers, especially small- and medium-sized businesses and international clients, it said.

Still, the company acknowledged the uncertainty of the volatile and highly competitive online advertising market.

“Advertisers will not continue to do business with us, or they will reduce the prices they are willing to pay to advertise with us, if we do not deliver ads in an effective manner, or if they do not believe that their investment in advertising with us will generate a competitive return relative to alternatives, including online, mobile,” the company said in the filings.

Some analysts estimate Twitter could be worth as much as $15 billion. That’s a fraction what Facebook was worth at the time of its debut, but Twitter’s profile is just as high.

Indeed, its more established rival is borrowing a few pages from Twitter’s book, particularly in its approach to mobile advertising. On Thursday, Facebook announced an advertising initiative for its Instagram unit, which competes most directly with Twitter.

Comparisons to Facebook

Since Twitter was spun out of a struggling San Francisco startup in 2006, it has grown to approximately 2,000 employees based in 15 offices worldwide. Along the way, it helped create new ways for advertisers and corporations to reach audiences, from a “promoted tweets” model now replicated by Facebook and other internet platforms, to its “second screen” approach to encouraging real-time debate around television programmes.

Twitter’s IPO has already drawn multiple comparisons to Facebook. When the world’s largest social network debuted, concerns centred around its inability to fully earn revenue off mobile users.

Twitter appears to have less of an issue with mobile. About 65 per cent of its revenue derives from mobile users, it said.

The service had 218.3 million monthly active users, on average, in the three months ended June 30. Three-quarters of its monthly active users are considered mobile users, it said in the filing.

But Twitter managed only average revenue per user in the second quarter of 2013 of 64 cents compared to Facebook’s roughly $1.60, according to Reuters’ calculations.